Hot Hot Heat - Make Up the Breakdown
(Sub Pop)
Let's give it up for the post-punk revival. With bands like Les Savy Fav, The Liars, Enon, Interpol, and the Walkmen all harkening back to the late 70s when art-damaged bands like Wire, Suicide, and Pere Ubu were cutting up the scene with such incredible albums as Dub Housing, Pink Flag, 154, and First Album (not to mention that all three of these bands have either remained together or recently regrouped to offer the world some more startlingly good music), it's hard to keep the smiles away. And, uh... let's also not forget the bands who are bringing this into the mainstream: The Hives, The Vines, The Strokes, and The White Stripes (I'll leave my opinions out of this one... although I will say that Les Savy Fav are more rock 'n' roll alone than all of these bands combined). And then, we can't forget the bands who are still "underground," so to speak, but remain confident about breaking into whatever new rock scene is emerging. Hot Hot Heat, I'm talking about you.
But here I am, playing the part of the fool, dissing a band I actually somewhat enjoy, and whose album I shelled out supa-cash for. Well, alright, it wasn't supa-cash. It wasn't even cash at all... to tell you the truth. I bought Make Up the Breakdown with store credit.
Anyway, I mean no disrespect to Vancouver's favourite pseudo art punks. I actually find myself liking this album. I mean, why would I buy it if I didn't like it? Alright, I'm getting bogged down in my own inferior semantics, but whatever, this is an OK release, even though at times it can get a little grating. You've got to take the good with the bad, you know? I mean, where would we be otherwise? You've just got to take the good with the bad... First, the bad:
Make Up the Breakdown plays like either a failed Stooges album or a weird hybrid of the White Stripes (blues, blues, blues) and the Strokes (fashion, fashion, fashion, and then, um, rock, rock, rock)—a combination that works some of the time and doesn't some of the time. For instance, one of the failures of this album is the weak "Aveda," which features, among other things, some angsty blues riffing and pretty M.O.R. lyrics. Similarly, "No, Not Now" could have been really stellar, but, thanks to both the blues influence and the fairly outdated and clichéd rock posturing (I mean, come on) fails terribly. Terribly!
But nevermind my negativity. I do enjoy this album, and, while some of the tracks remain ridiculously bad, there is enough good stuff on here to elevate Make Up the Breakdown from yet-another-bad-rock-album into a fairly good sophomore release. For example, the opening track, "Naked In the City Again," while having all of the bad elements I've already mentioned, is so insanely catchy (the lyrics, especially, make for great shower singing: "said she's got it all/said she's got it all/said she's got it/I don't want to be the one to tell her that she don't," over, and over, and over) it's impossible not to dig. Likewise, the two album closers, "Save Us S.O.S." and "In Cairo," both provide some of that good old rock and roll fun that's perfect cruising music (yeah, yeah, cruising music). So, there you go. When you take the good with the bad, you'll find that the good far outweighs whatever bad there is on this album. Lead guy Dustin Hawthorne's impassioned croon bogs some songs down but lifts some from what would be fairly typical indie rock via Rolling Stones via Stooges shoddiness into something better. Even if these guys completely embrace the fashion, it's all OK, because the music makes up for it.
Nonetheless, this is not the post-punk that I know and love. It's easy to swallow and sugar-coated, and when I want an explosion of post-punk, I either want to be able to dance to it (Enon, Brainiac, Liars) or it should at least energize me (Wire, Interpol, everything else), and this does neither. So I'm not going to recommend. Instead, I'll say: hey, go buy Enon's High Society, Interpol's Turn on the Bright Lights, and the first three Wire albums. Now that's money well spent!
|
